The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for sampling and processing one or more physiological signals from a subject. More specifically, the present invention relates to monitoring of one or more neurological signals from a subject.
Epilepsy is a neurological disorder of the brain characterized by chronic, recurring seizures. Seizures are a result of uncontrolled discharges of electrical activity in the brain. A seizure typically manifests itself as sudden, involuntary, disruptive, and often destructive sensory, motor, and cognitive phenomena. Seizures are frequently associated with physical harm to the body (e.g., tongue biting, limb breakage, and burns), a complete loss of consciousness, and incontinence. A typical seizure, for example, might begin as spontaneous shaking of an arm or leg and progress over seconds or minutes to rhythmic movement of the entire body, loss of attention, loss of consciousness, and voiding of urine or stool.
A single seizure most often does not cause significant morbidity or mortality, but severe or recurring seizures (epilepsy) results in major medical, social, and economic consequences. Epilepsy is most often diagnosed in children and young adults, making the long-term medical and societal burden severe for this population of subjects. People with uncontrolled epilepsy are often significantly limited in their ability to work in many industries and usually cannot legally drive an automobile. An uncommon, but potentially lethal form of seizure is called status epilepticus, in which a seizure continues for more than 30 minutes. This continuous seizure activity may lead to permanent brain damage, and can be lethal if untreated.
While the exact cause of epilepsy is often uncertain, epilepsy can result from head trauma (such as from a car accident or a fall), infection (such as meningitis), stroke, or from neoplastic, vascular or developmental abnormalities of the brain. Approximately 70% of epileptic subjects, especially most forms that are resistant to treatment (i.e., refractory), are idiopathic or of unknown causes, and is generally presumed to be an inherited genetic disorder.
Demographic studies have estimated the prevalence of epilepsy at approximately 1% of the population, or approximately 2.5 million individuals in the United States alone. In order to assess possible causes and to guide treatment, epileptologists (both neurologists and neurosurgeons) typically evaluate subjects with seizures with brain wave electrical analysis and imaging studies, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
While there is no known cure for epilepsy, chronic usage of anticonvulsant and antiepileptic medications can control seizures in most people. For most cases of epilepsy, the disease is chronic and requires chronic medications for treatment. The anticonvulsant and antiepileptic medications do not actually correct the underlying conditions that cause seizures. Instead, the anticonvulsant and antiepileptic medications manage the subject's epilepsy by reducing the frequency of seizures. There are a variety of classes of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs), each acting by a distinct mechanism or set of mechanisms.
AEDs generally suppress neural activity by a variety of mechanisms, including altering the activity of cell membrane ion channels and the susceptibility of action potentials or bursts of action potentials to be generated. These desired therapeutic effects are often accompanied by the undesired side effect of sedation, nausea, dizziness, etc. Some of the fast acting AEDs, such as benzodiazepine, are also primarily used as sedatives. Other medications have significant non-neurological side effects, such as gingival hyperplasia, a cosmetically undesirable overgrowth of the gums, and/or a thickening of the skull, as occurs with phenytoin. Furthermore, some AED are inappropriate for women of child bearing age due to the potential for causing severe birth defects.
An estimated 70% of subjects will respond favorably to their first AED monotherapy and no further medications will be required. However, for the remaining 30% of the subjects, their first AED will fail to fully control their seizures and they will be prescribed a second AED—often in addition to the first—even if the first AED does not stop or change a pattern or frequency of the subject's seizures. For those that fail the second AED, a third AED will be tried, and so on. Subjects who fail to gain control of their seizures through the use of AEDs are commonly referred to as “medically refractory.” This creates a scenario in which 750,000 subjects or more in the United States have uncontrolled epilepsy. These medically refractory subjects account for 80% of the $12.5 billion in indirect and direct costs that are attributable to epilepsy in the United States.
A major challenge for physicians treating epileptic subjects is gaining a clear view of the effect of a medication or incremental medications. Presently, the standard metric for determining efficacy of the medication is for the subject or for the subject's caregiver to keep a diary of seizure activity. However, it is well recognized that such self-reporting is often of poor quality because subjects often do not realize when they have had a seizure, or fail to accurately record seizures.
If a subject is refractory to treatment with chronic usage of medications, surgical treatment options may be considered. If an identifiable seizure focus is found in an accessible region of the brain, which does not involve “eloquent cortex” or other critical regions of the brain, then resection is considered. If no focus is identifiable, there are multiple foci, or the foci are in surgically inaccessible regions or involve eloquent cortex, then surgery is less likely to be successful or may not be indicated. Surgery is effective in more than half of the cases in which it is indicated, but it is not without risk and is irreversible. Because of the inherent surgical risks and the potentially significant neurological sequelae from respective procedures, many subjects or their parents decline this therapeutic modality.
Some non-respective functional procedures, such as corpus callosotomy and subpial transection, sever white matter pathways without removing tissue. The objective of these surgical procedures is to interrupt pathways that mediate spread of seizure activity. These functional disconnection procedures can also be quite invasive and may be less effective than resection.
An alternative treatment for epilepsy that has demonstrated some utility is open loop Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS). This is a reversible procedure which introduces an electronic device which employs a pulse generator and an electrode to alter neural activity. The vagus nerve is a major nerve pathway that emanates from the brainstem and passes through the neck to control visceral function in the thorax and abdomen. VNS uses open looped, intermittent stimulation of the left vagus nerve in the neck in an attempt to reduce the frequency and intensity of seizures. See Fisher et al., “Reassessment: Vagus nerve stimulation for epilepsy, A report of the Therapeutics and Technology Assessment Subcommittee of the American Academy of Neurology,” Neurology 1999; 53:666-669. While not highly effective, it has been estimated that VNS reduces seizures by an average of approximately 30-50% in about 30-50% of subjects who are implanted with the device. Unfortunately, a vast majority of the subjects who are outfitted with the Cyberonics® VNS device still suffer from un-forewarned seizures and many subjects obtain no benefit whatsoever.
Another alternative electrical stimulation therapy for the treatment of epilepsy is deep brain stimulation (DBS). Open-loop deep brain stimulation has been attempted at several anatomical target sites, including the anterior nucleus of the thalamus, the centromedian nucleus of the thalamus, and the hippocampus. The results have shown some potential to reduce seizure frequency, but the efficacy leaves much room for improvement.
Another type of electrical stimulation therapy for the treatment epilepsy has been proposed by NeuroPace, Inc., in which an implanted device is designed to detect abnormal electrical activity in the brain and respond by delivering electrical stimulation to the brain.
There have also been a number of proposals described in the patent literature regarding the use of predictive algorithms that purportedly can predict the onset of a seizure. When the predictive algorithm predicts the onset of a seizure, some type of warning is provided to the subject regarding the oncoming seizure or some sort of therapy is initiated. For example, see U.S. Pat. No. 3,863,625 to Viglione et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,995,868 to Dorfmeister et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 6,658,287 to Litt et al., which describe a variety of proposed seizure prediction systems.